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July 31, 2016

BG (Before Granta . . .)

The novel is over – and a more "novel" kind of novel is needed. Or at least Bernard Bergonzi suggested as much in The Situation of the Novel, back in 1970. The novelist writing after the Second World War, he wrote, "has inherited a form whose principal character is novelty, or stylistic dynamism, and yet nearly everything possible to be achieved has already been done".

There have been many variants on the same, now far from novel theme. The Bergonzi version has Proust and Joyce as the twin "apotheosis of the realistic novel"; where else was there to go? What on earth would happen next? Clearly a renewal was in order . . . .

At least as far as the novel in one language is concerned, an alternative means of tracking the progression of the novel over the many years since the glory days of the great modernists is offered in the latest volume of the Oxford History of the Novel in English. Edited by Peter Boxall and Bryan Cheyette, the seventh in this already bulky, impressive series, covers "British and Irish fiction since 1940". It will be reviewed in the TLS in due course; for now, though, it's one of those critical parlour games that catches the eye here: the OHNE editors' retrospective take on the "Best of Young British Novelists" scheme inaugurated by Granta and the British Book Marketing Council in 1983.

In its very first issue, in 1979, Granta proclaimed "the end of the English novel [and] the beginning of British fiction". The new generation was apparently more engaged with the international scene and with theoretical ideas "such as postmodernism, postcolonialism and feminism". The old, insular, "exhausted" lot could hardly hope to compete with all that. Who would replace them?

Well, as a reminder – deep breath – how about this lot, all under forty years of age at the time?

"Prescient" is the word some have fairly used of the Granta list, and not just in relation to 1983's crop. (1993, 2003 and 2013 aren't bad, either.) What the OHNE editors suggest, however, is that there is a false, "invariably overstated" narrative here of "youth superseding age". The received idea of a "new era in the novel", dating back some thirty or forty years, is "misleading". Take a look at their table of under-forty novelists of the four decades before 1983 who might (ought to?) have been seen at the time as equally promising talents, many of them engaged, in various ways, with "postmodernism, postcolonialism and feminism" as their successors were:

Boxall and Cheyette's introductory account of the post-war novel is freely available to read online; I'll merely add that literary forms seem to be constantly dying and reviving, as the short story does with tedious circularity. And that even if the OHNE's contentions about the course of literary history don't convince you, it's not a bad way of reminding yourself of the literary eclecticism of recent times. B. S. Johnson, P. D. James, J. G. Ballard and Margaret Drabble at work in the same decade doesn't sound to me like bad going for a genre that's supposedly dead in the water.

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I fear I must be missing the point in this comment, but I'll make it anyway in the hope of being enlightened.

I'm puzzled how, in 1943, John Braine, who was born in 1922 and whose first novel, "Room at the Top", was published in 1957, might have been seen as a promising talent. I doubt even Braine himself, at 21, would have been so prescient.

And was the promise of William Golding (b. 1911) recognised before Faber accepted "The Lord of the Flies" (1954)?

Its interesting to see how often the refrain The Novel is Dead has been so constantly reiterated since WW2. and has seemingly been proved wrong.
The situation now or at least since the Thatcher era began is that yes , it is dead and surely time to nail down the coffin lid.
Because hidden or exposed the novel is about the human in society and the great writers always show how the human relates to that society and either accepts his situation or fights against it. This social conflict is either expressed either directly or implied
That sense of stress and conflict in society has to all extents ended . Essentially capitalism ,Thatcherism has won ..there is no (apparently ) alternative ,all roads lead to America as they once did to Rome. Alternatives (socialism?)are nowhere to be seen
It is as unthinkable to question this as it is to question life itself. But is there no social stress in Britain either public or private?
What about poverty in Britain etc…In fact no one seriously believes that real poverty exists as is the case in much of the world..As the Benefits Street people showed life can be surprisingly good even if only sustained by alcohol and drugs.
Its one thing to look at the rich in Trollopes The Way We Live Now but those rich were living in an age when barefoot ragged children were sleeping underWaterloo Bridge in Winter .For all the talk of wealth inequality no one really wants to do anything about it ,after all most of the rich only got rich supplying us with our trashy pleasures so how can we complain
With all sexual and drug pleasures freely available life is good …Man..isnt it ?
Attempting to look at the drugged up monkey jumping dancing three in a bed world of today would certainly not sell books in todays world
One could point out that its pretty certain that Americas nuclear holocaust against Russia and China will bring the world to an end in about twenty years..But Man I don’t want to even think about that crap…
That’s all folks..

David, I don't think you're missing the point at all; I agree with you about both of those novelists.

Are you missing the spirit of this hypothetical exercise, though? Unless I've misunderstood it myself.

I took the OHNE's lists to be an argument for the variety of post-war literature, drawing attention to the variety of novelists who were contemporaries (if not necessarily novelists at the same stage of their artistic development). If the old-style, Cambridge-centric Granta had decided to compile a list in 1943, it wouldn't have included John Braine – but it wouldn't have included the pre-Godot Samuel Beckett, either, with one published novel to his name. In their places, you'd have found a couple of young guns who were fashionable at the time, right?

On the other hand, aren't the OHNE editors technically in the right? Granta has included at least one writer on its list who had yet to publish a first novel at the time: Adam Thirlwell.

Two more incidental points. Faber *accepted* Lord of the Flies in late 1953; they *published* it in 1954, but it didn't make any great impact on the world then. That came later. So you could go further and say Golding wouldn't have been Granta-ized at all, which shows up the dubious nature of the exercise. (Relatively late bloomers deserve recognition just as much as young guns do..)

And secondly: you've reminded me that a few novelists have made it onto Granta's list more than once (Adam Mars-Jones, Zadie Smith, Adam Thirlwell). They're brilliant writers, but does that defeat the purpose of the exercise? Again, assuming the idea is to seek out new voices and all that.